


Passenger

by willyouboy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Not Hunters, Always Female Dean, Angst, Bittersweet, Brother-Sister Relationships, Complicated Relationships, Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester UST, Denial, Driving, F/M, Family Feels, Female Dean Winchester, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Genderbending, Genderswap, Height Differences, Hotels, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Masturbation, Nostalgia, One-Sided Attraction, Realistic, Road Trips, Rule 63, Sam Winchester-centric, Sibling Love, Siblings, Stanford Era, Unrequited, Unrequited Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, Wincest - Freeform, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000, Wordcount: Over 1.000, unsure feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 04:22:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4732670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willyouboy/pseuds/willyouboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean and Sam don't get the chance to hunt and bond, but they used to be closer.</p><p> Sam has almost finished being an undergrad when a tragedy causes him and Dean to do a roadtrip together. It's something their father figures might do them some good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Passenger

He’s been packed since the night before.

As in, even what he would usually sleep in is folded away in one of his bags by the front door. And a t-shirt and old jeans weren’t his first choice to sleep in but Sam figured he’d be ready, extra ready for his ride. 

It’s past noon, which makes her a couple hours late and breakfast too old to smell anymore as he peeks out of the kitchen window. All he’d gotten were a few bites in before he’d started checking through the blinds. Drawing them up completely seems like a better idea so he does that but it’s not like he’ll miss her. He doesn’t live on a busy street. 

Everyone is somewhere else already, his roommates and most of his neighbors. The weather’s nice but there’s no one outside, not here. From what he can see, both sides of the sidewalk are covered in that dappled shade from trees in yards of lawns that have been responsibly mown sometime within the week. The street is clear except for the trickle of sprinkler runoff in the gutters. It glitters in a line down the concrete.

It's just another nice day in Palo Alto.

A car eventually does drag by and he sighs from it being the wrong color besides the wrong size. Well, and the fact that it passes his place pretty confidently.  
Sam pulls out his phone and leans against the counter just to have something else to look at. 

_I’ll be there_

That text is an hour and three minutes old. 

He thinks about calling until the phone goes dim. His reflection is dull and instant on the screen. 

He’d like to think that only he could recognize the residual baby face going on despite his brow, and his jaw wanting to be a sharper square. And okay, maybe the hair isn't helping with the stretched out kid look. He wouldn’t say it’s long because it just hides the tops of his ears. Shaggy might be more accurate. Even alone he rolls his eyes because Dean thinks 'shaggy' is the _perfect_ way to put it. Besides, it's not like they should even be swapping opinions in that area anyway. His is short and hers is long, he went dark where she got lighter. He’d never say blonde, but she likes to say she is sometimes when she’s trying to impress somebody. Some guy. To be fair, she's only explicitly said _blonde bombshell_ once.

Of course, before he knew better, Sam was quick to point out that her hair's not actually yellow enough exactly. It’s a correction that had earned him walking home from school more days than he’d cared for. She would always call though, always talked to him until she'd see him come through the door. 

Speaking of, maybe he can leave a voicemail. He knows better than to think she’ll answer. Maybe just say something like, “Hey Dean, we can try this another time. Take care.” Or maybe, “Hey Dee, let’s reschedule. No big deal.” Or, “I love you, I’ll be here.”  
Well, that last one might be a bit- Dean wouldn’t like it.

A text could work though. 

_You still coming Dee?_  
There. Sent. 

He slides his phone into his back pocket, again, and turns away from the window. 

It puts the refrigerator in plain view with its magnets and clutter of lists and reminders. The funeral program has its own place at eyelevel against the shiny white plastic of the freezer door. The portrait of his father rests in an unadorned oval on the sepia pamphlet. Sam hasn’t decided if keeping it there on the fridge is respectful or a form of punishment. Masochistic? Therapeutic? Either way, it’s there every time he’s hungry. He has to go to his father for food. 

Ironic kind of. Dean did most of the cooking growing up. 

Maybe he should find a new place for it. Maybe frame it, maybe put it in the attic? Where does Dean keep hers? Did she keep the leftover ones from the funeral?  
Her hair had been in a tight bun and her dress had been plain and new and probably picked out by someone else. It was sleeveless and boxy and went to her shins. She’d looked so lost. It was just one room, one decent sized church full of the patchwork of people they’d known for years, but still. From start to finish it was like she was always on the verge of tears but her eyes just stayed wet while her cheeks stayed dry. Each time he wanted to go to her someone else already had a hold of her or was squeezing his shoulder and giving advice.

“Be strong for each other.”

“You’ve got to take care of her now.”

“She’s gonna need her little brother.”

And it’s all stuff he already knew, but it made his neck hot and his eyes burn. He already knew all of that, he could see her just like they could. And as the crowd thinned he’d ignored their condolences because he was almost where he needed to be. Deanna is small, but that seems like such an inaccurate way to describe the potency she keeps while being just five feet off the ground. Her shoulders were set like a bull, tense and shameless and ready for a load to add to the rest. Her stance always seems at odds with how petite she is, bright-eyed and fit. Graceful when she wants to be. 

She’d side-stepped his reach before he knew his hand was out. She’d been keeping track of him the whole service, even if she hadn’t met his eyes once. It was different, knowing that she was still pissed from thinking this event, Dad, would change things. 

Her guard’s been up for the past two years but it’s just them now. Now that Dad’s gone Sam has known her longer than anyone, and she’s known him longer than that. Nothing else, no one else, should’ve mattered right then. And Sam remembers having that specific thought as he felt the gaping space between him and his sister, how his tears had come out too hot for him to realize they were there.

Her arms had come around him then, steady, normal even except for the last minute feeling of her clutching the back of his black jacket, not fitting quite right since his last growth spurt. It was their first touch in months and he’d be surprised if she were keeping track, too. The hug had been right on time though as his sobs had come out more relief than having anything to do with the casket a few feet away. 

Maybe they’ll be alright. 

He leaves the kitchen but looks out the window on his way. The mail truck is parked across the street, like it always is around two in the afternoon. He isn’t expecting anything, least of all a package. So it’s a bit of a surprise to get a knock at his door. 

He finds his sister on the porch. He figured she’d honk from the security of the car when she got here. But it’s definitely her. She has her hair pulled back into its customary low ponytail, isn’t bothered by the loose ends curled behind her ears. The sun makes some strands look golden.  
Her freckles always have stood out more in the summer. They’re softly scattered but are the most dense where only one man could make her nose scrunch when she smiled, and his leather jacket fits on her like a shell. She was always a daddy’s girl, probably never really had a choice after Mom. But when Sam sees her now, sees how tiny she looks in their father’s beaten leather rolled at her wrists, she’s just a girl. He wants to hug her, but that hasn’t been allowed for a couple years now. And Dean has her hands in her pockets. She’s probably got one fist around her keys and the other full of lint older than both of them.

Overall, if he didn’t know better, he’d say she looked hungover, but she wouldn’t. Drinking the night before a drive is against their family’s unspoken road trip commandments. It’s right up there with no feet on the driver’s seat. Bare feet on the dash were fine though, for some reason Sam never got. He has the sudden urge to ask her why now, ask her like she can just turn around and confirm it. It’s just an urge though, isn’t big enough for him to actually risk words just yet.  
Besides, she’s got a set to her mouth that says nothing he wouldn’t expect. She’s only here because she has to be. Because Dad said so, and that’s that. As per his final wish, his children will make a trip to the first city he let them drive to alone. He thought it’d help them. Sam gets that, he really does, but-

“It’s just a few days.”

“What?”

She’s looking past him, nods her chin to the suitcases just inside. 

“It’s just a few days, man,” and with that she turns and walks back to the car, an old black shiny Impala. It glints like it’s just been washed.

It takes until after she’s gone and opened the trunk before he follows. He drags the suitcases with sweaty hands. He puts one bag in and she puts in the other. The car’s cleaned out and she’s got a bottle of water in her cup holder and ginger ale on the passenger’s side. After they pull off the curb she asks, “You still like that, right?” 

The soda, he must’ve been staring. He nods so now he kind of has to take a sip. It fizzes on his tongue somewhere barely cooler than lukewarm. The bubbles get to his nose and, for some reason, he thinks it’s a private affair. When he glances over there’s amusement in the way she flicks on her blinker for the freeway. It’s more like faith that has him sensing her smirk lurking just beneath the surface. 

“It’s good to see you,” and he’s not sure if he’s ever said that to her before. It works though, makes the first smile he’s gotten out of her in a good while, and it’s a smile with teeth. But that usually means that it comes with a bite.  
“You saw me last week,” she adds.

Yes Dean, at the funeral, at Dad’s funeral.

“Hey, how’re you holding-“  
The radio’s promptly louder than it needs to be. A mumbled, “Not in the car,” is her only explanation. She’s facing straight when she says so, like she can see a hundred miles out but her fingers are still on the dial. They poke out from the sleeve of Dad’s jacket as she turns the knob to find Dad’s music, from Dad’s car.  
Alright, he’s just along for the ride. Point made. And her hero’s off limits.

Sam shifts in his seat. There are going to be hours of nothing else to do. Normally, the passenger mans the radio, or schedules rest stops, or navigates. She probably won’t ask him for anything. She knows how to get where she’s going. She’s taken him there before. She’s the driver and the passenger. Is there a word for that, being both?

It’s quiet in the car for an entire song on the radio that neither of them will admit to liking. No one scans to something else.

Instead, checking the mirrors doesn’t sound so bad, not that it’d matter from his angle. The side mirrors show him the same thing. Fast road, white lines, their own doors. It’s the rearview that makes his mouth dry, makes him high-pitched, makes him say, “Where’s mom?”

The locket’s gone. The one that wrapped and hung around the rearview mirror for most of his life. He feels like it’s his fault that it’s missing even though he’s never touched it, was never allowed to. The extra space is heavy for something so small. It doesn’t even feel right that the car is still moving.

Dean still has her eyes on the road when she says, “With Dad.” One hand’s on the wheel while the other rubs at her shoulder. She probably can’t even feel it through the thick skin of the coat. 

It’s hardly been an hour into this ride.

Side by side for miles, for cities, for drawn-out hours. They’re able to make it quite a ways into the afternoon without a word. Could be hereditary.

“You hungry?”  
She nods toward the blue and white sign crawling their way, a gas pump in one square and a knife and fork in the other. 

“Yeah, sure.”

Dean’s nod is absent as she pulls off at the next exit and straight into the first parking lot. Chinese sounds good.

The restaurant is lowly lit with an aquarium bubbling in the corner. It’s a quiet meal mutually spent with a phone in one hand and chopsticks in the other. He bites his tongue when she asks for separate checks and leaves her fortune cookie behind: Everything happens for a reason.

It’s dark enough now that she’s got the headlights on when he gets in the car. About two gradual hours in he’s pulled up from the edge of a dream when the rhythmic thuds knock underneath the wheels. It stops for a few minutes but comes back again. Dean, her face gently glowing from the clock on the dash, doesn’t seem bothered by it. She’s too busy glaring through the windshield and massaging at her neck. 

“You wanna switch?”

She tugs the wheel so that they aren’t riding the shoulder anymore, like it’ll take back his question.

“What?”

“I can drive.”

“No, we’re fine,” and she sits up, cracks the window. They change lanes on the empty stretch of road for tactical reasons Sam won’t understand. Like Dean could never say no to him.

“Dean, you’re still rubbing your neck.”

“Shit, Sam. We’re fine,” she turns down the music and can probably feel him staring. “Go back to sleep.” 

Fall asleep? His sister’s a blink away from earning them the front page news of . . . wherever they are. It’s dark and wide out there. He can’t tell if no one’s awake or if there just aren’t any houses. No one’s in front of them. No one’s behind them either. There’s no one who’d help.

“Our hotel’s in an hour.” Dean let’s herself yawn once the olive branch is spoken. When all Sam does is yawn back she turns the radio low enough that the wind on the driver’s side swallows up the sound. 

He wakes up alone. The car parked and ticking as it rests beneath the neon vacancy light. He has to blink past the garish orange sheen to see the building. It’s a motel for sure, two floors high and at least a decade or five behind with lines of doors facing outwards. Well, at least he just brought clothes and nothing too valuable. Then again, it beats a ditch. 

There’s no text from Dean, but the lobby isn’t too far. He locks up and wheels in his bags.

She’s at the counter, both elbows on it. The clerk is the only one who looks up. The old man’s smile is equal parts perfunctory and distracted as Dean trades her signature for two room keys. She slides one into her pocket and holds the other one out to Sam. “You’re in 107,” she shoulders her duffle adding, “and don’t lose it. There’s a fee.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah, like fifty bucks.” 

“Dee, you know what I mean.”

Her back is to him when she walks out where he came in, “Yup. G’night.”

It’s hard and uneven, the key. It takes a couple tries when he gets to his room. A flick of the light switch shows him nothing to complain about or praise. A bed, a television, a generic landscape picture on the wall. The paint gives everything a tinge like an old picture from a photo album.

He sets his alarm earlier than necessary to make sure that his sister doesn’t ditch town one brother short. She hasn’t done that before, but, never say never.  
He dozes and the word ‘estranged’ hovers just out of reach. It’s still there when he meets up with Dean at the car the next day.

The jacket hangs off the driver’s seat as they leave town. She hasn’t said anything, but they won’t be stopping until they get to their destination. It’s hours away, but they’ll get there before dusk. 

It’s hard to believe they’re actually doing this. They’re going back there. And the one person he’d run to is taking him. 

Roll the window down. Roll the window down and count to something. Say the alphabet backwards. Take a deep breath. He feels the wind in his hair. It smells like manure. 

“Hey, seatbelt.”

He gets to it, but- “What do we do when we get there?”

“I dunno.”

“What does he want us to do?”

“Dunno,” and both hands are on the wheel now, arms locked.

“Okay, fine. What do you think he’d want us to-“

“Sam! Can we not?” 

Well, when will they? It’s just a matter of miles before they get there. And yes, there’s no single conversation that will make them better but they’re orphans. Does she get that? For each of them, family has been cut to one other person. He keeps pressing the button but the window can’t go any lower. He needs to take a walk.

“Remember when you lost your tooth on that fishing trip?”

She’s using that voice that reminds him of having his hair ruffled for good grades.

“Yeah,” of course he did. She’d been caught red-handed slipping the quarter under his pillow in the backseat on the ride home. He thought she’d been taking it from him and when he’d said so Dean had thrown the coin hard, dead center of his chest.

“Well, that’s where we’re driving through right now.”

When he leans his chair back he doesn’t smell the cows as much. 

“Let’s go to the lake,” and it sounds like it could work once he gets it out.

“Yeah?” And now she’s got that voice like he’s just told her what he wants to be when he grows up. 

“Yeah, maybe just grab a couple sandwiches and chips, or something, and find a bench and-“ he shrugs. They pass a few cars before she says, “Maybe on the way back, Sammy Boy.” She’s smiling, eyes grinning, too. When the radio gets to a static heavy local commercial she starts humming the first, and the only, verse she knows of the Irish song. He shakes his head as she keeps it up and he doesn’t make a sound. It makes his heart sound louder. 

Dosing off is so uncomplicated. He’s grateful for that and the fact that he’s missed the swelling stage of stress overwhelming the cabin. There’s no music playing and Dean is well over the speed limit. She’s a soldier, and the parachute’s already dropped. It’s likely she’s had the same expression for the past hundred miles. Her little knuckles press her skin with the grip she’s got and there are wasps in her skin. That’s the way Dad would’ve put it. It’s not just the sunset that’s put a gleam in her eye.

Sam doesn’t have enough pride to deny that it’s confirmation and fear when he sees them go by the green sign and reads the city’s name in highway standard white letters. 

They’ve made it back to the place that warped who they are to each other. 

They had their rite of passage here. Dad had given his daughter a wad of bills for food and hotels and a promise that he wouldn’t call too often. He figured his children were ready for a road trip of their own. They came to this very city two days away two years ago. Why? Because Dean found out that there’s a bar here with the closest mechanical bull. 

She was a single twentysomething with a full tank of gas. The CDs were in the glove compartment but the radio seemed to be doing just fine. No songs they didn’t sing along to and no commercials longer than a minute. It’s a shared exaggeration when they’d thudded their heads back onto their seats as static finally beat out all the other sounds coming from the speakers. It was a laughable inconvenience, like too many people calling on your birthday.

Her hair tie came out miles ago and she’d winked and said, “I’ll grab one from you later.” She was driving fast with the windows down, even the back ones. It was flat road, acres of farmland. There was chocolate melting between the pinch of his fingers, some knockoff version of a Kit-Kat. Her mouth was open and she’d had her eye on it, even with her foot on the gas. The music came back loud and she’d laughed, “C’mon Sammy!”

Her hair whipped around them as he’d leaned closer, slipped the treat onto her tongue. It was a game for him as much as it was a game for her: how close could he get without wetting his fingertips. He’d opened the second bag of candy while she sung beside him, mouth full and only just off-key.

When they arrived, it turned out she was too short to ride the bull so they went to the bar next door. Sam hadn’t been allowed in but he didn’t mind, it just meant he finally got to pick a station as he waited in the car and called some friends. Dean practically giggled after she banged on the hood and made him jump.  
Sam got to drive them to the hotel but Dean demanded a piggy back in exchange. She laughed into the crook of his neck, legs tight around his waist from behind, her ankles hooked just at the insides of his thighs. She slurred into his ear about nothing, about the free drinks she got. That close, she was warmer than the weather. The buttons of her flannel were hard against his spine as he fished out the room key. 

After dumping her onto her bed he accepted the glancing punches to his sides. Anyone else would read her face as cocky, but he knows that expression as ‘stay back, or this’ll hurt.’

The next few minutes had been her stretching her limbs toward all four corners of the mattress and a leg dangling over the side, a pillow pushed to the floor. The sheets were a pattern of geometric sepia shapes. They were meant to be forgettable. He could pick out triangles and squares mostly. She’d snored hard that night, even up until the next morning when he woke her up just enough to tell her that he’d be gone getting gas and something greasy for her to munch on.  
His wallet. That was the culprit as far as Sam was concerned. He’d forgotten his wallet so that’s why he’d driven back early. He’d tiptoed into their room quietly, he didn’t want to wake her from a hangover. She didn’t hear him at all when he’d opened the door.

He wasn’t ready, like being shoved in the pool by someone bigger than you. She’s bigger than him in all the ways that matter even though she took up less of the bed. She raised him, she’d mothered him, and those same hands she used for changing his diaper and brushing his hair and shining Dad’s shoes were coaxing something between her thighs. He’d only seen her once and he was young and it was the last bath they ever took together and that thing, that place, was the reason why, there at the bottom of the bowl of her hips. 

She was laying on the bed the wrong way, knee hitched up and nothing but a shirt on. The faded plaid was pinched by her elbow against her stomach. Her face looked just the same as when she’d taught him how to screw a light-bulb in high school. Her face was scrunched the whole time, getting ready for the light to hit at any second. 

Too many tiny pointless significant things were awake and tangling just behind his eyes. Her hair down and hanging off the edge and almost to the floor, her salmon painted toes, how he couldn’t see her and think of her name. He didn’t mean to be there in the doorway, but he was there and he stopped feeling whole. Something had dropped out from the soles of his feet and tugged his heart on the way. Something too sore to say and too quick to catch. Something that makes him relieved that his mother’s not alive, that he won’t ever have to look her in the eyes. He wanted to blame her for not seeing him for so long. He should’ve been in trouble by then or shunned or shoved. Imagined their father’s hand yanking him hard by the back of the collar out the room door, out through the lobby, out into public air with his ankles dragging on the asphalt until a parking block catches him at his stinging heels. No one did that though. _You’re old enough to know better._ And the words sounded the way he’d expect his mother to sound, some combination of his sister and father’s voices. It thrummed behind his ribs louder than the gasp a pile of blankets away where Dean had surprised herself with a touch. She was quiet, but just as quiet as you have to be when you think you’re by yourself. 

He knew that he’d be booking a plane back home, leaving her passenger’s side empty and his key at the front desk, he knew what it was. He knew what it was that had fallen from his feet. Her pedestal. 

He must’ve blinked at the wrong time, or the right time, or right on time for his eyes to be closed when her eyes finally opened and he doesn’t see until after she’s crashed herself into the space between their beds, comforter clumsily coiled around her and hair hanging over her face. There was nothing safe to say.  
They’re flying past the exits until Dean grits her teeth and pulls off on the last one in the city limits. She runs the stoplight when they rush back onto the entrance turned the other way. 

“There. We went,” she tucks some hair behind her ear and she’s flushed along her angel kisses. 

“Where to now?” He’s got his body pressed against his door as much as his seatbelt will allow.

“I’m taking you home.”

“What about the lake?”

She adjusts the rearview mirror and he has to pretend that her eyes don’t shine.

“I changed my mind.”

**Author's Note:**

> This work right now is probably going to be part of something more extended. Warnings that I am using it as a place holder for a longer (very much related) work. Thanks so much for reading!


End file.
